Embracing serendipity

Every year when working with my students in the darkroom, I try to encourage a thought process that is as receptive to unintended results as intended ones. This is not always an easy endeavour, and it occurred to me this year that I lack a clear label for the kind of approach I want them to take. Quite often, what I mean becomes evident only when it is found.

We speak a lot about planning in education (we live in a ‘target’ driven world it seems), but not so much about the pleasure of the unplanned, of what one discovers through doing, even when one wasn’t looking for it.

On one happy day when one of my students had the unplanned event revelation, I at last came up with a satisfactory term: ‘serendipity’. Now, before I unpack the term a little (and I will not insult your intelligence; insert ‘happy accident’ and you have my gist), I will add some photographic seasoning with a specific darkroom reference.

In his book Black and White Photography Workshop, master printer John Blakemore tells the story of how he came to work on a new series of especially pale prints. On the day in question, he had intended to do something quite different, but, on realising he lacked the supplies he needed to print in his ordinary manner, set himself the challenge of printing his negative as pale as possible. You can (and should) check the results out yourself, for they are quite exquisite. A fortuitous set of circumstances that led to an unexpected path, a new way of working.

So, finally to serendipity. The term was coined in 1754 by Horace Walpole. He recounted the tale of the ‘Three Princes of Serendip’ who ‘were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of’. This could almost be a darkroom mantra! Be open to those discoveries, gained by accident or sagacity (or, we might say, ignorance), of results you weren’t after, but might rather like.

An awareness of serendipity shouldn’t be limited to just darkroom, of course. I wonder how many other aspects of our photography work would benefit from a little of these ‘things we were not in quest of’?

Pebble Project Gallery

The results of my Pebble Project tests to date now have a gallery. You will find it under the 'Resources' section of this site's menu. It puts all the results in one place, and offers both film scans and darkroom prints. You can click on each individual image for a larger version. Any further results that I share in blog posts will be added here too. I hope this will make the gallery a useful resource.

If you have been tuning in to this project, you will notice that I have added some scans and prints of other film and developer combinations. The addition of HP5+ and Delta 100 Professional here suggest the structure of my thinking for films to explore.

If you are mainly interested in the visual aspect of the tests, you may want to head over to the gallery now to take a look. What follows are some technical details and corrections for those interested in such matters, or who want to actively use the recipes explored.

Darkroom Prints

When making the darkroom prints, I was able to standardise at contrast grade 2.5 and aperture f5.6.  I used Ilford's Multigrade paper. It was not possible to print every negative for the same time, of course, due to differing exposures and hence negative densities. This then demands a standardisation procedure, and inevitably judgements - my personal judgements - come into play. I decided to print to the first hint of very pale, 'almost white' tone in the central lower small stone. I plan to do some tests with Multigrade Warmtone, which will necessitate changes in exposure times once again due to the different ISO of the paper (roughly half the speed of 'standard' Multigrade).

Adjustments and errors

I came up with quite a list originally with which to offer some interpretations of my first results (grain, midtone contrast, sharpness, and so on). The list itself was good, but I am now a little more philosophical about the comparisons.

Allowing for the fact that these are my results made with my own conditions and equipment (the old zone system caveat of the individual nature of test results), it strikes me now that tonality is the most obvious category of general applicability. The tonal comparisons that the gallery has to offer are broadly good, and I would expect you to get results not unlike mine if you followed the same film and developer recipes.

Making inkjet prints from scans adds variables that are different from darkroom printing variables. Because I am somebody who makes both inkjet and darkroom prints from negatives, I wanted to explore both processes. Comparing darkroom prints to inkjet ones provided an object lesson in the role of the printer drivers and scanner. One could argue that comparisons of grain, sharpness and midtone contrast are still good within, but not across, systems (be it digital setup or darkroom).

I was already aware that exposure variations would impact on tonality. I took the decision to expose the Perceptol samples differently, for example, because it is a speed reducing developer. This is in line with normal exposure practice. Put differently, there is no universal standard of exposure even following ISO in a studio situation. As the zone system teaches, ISO is nothing but a starting point for an individual's exposure value. That said, I exposed the FP4+ sample at 100 ISO, which in box speed terms is a little additional exposure. The Delta 100 sample was similarly exposed at 100, thus making it slightly less exposed by comparison. This can be seen in the negatives. I have ruminated somewhat as to whether to continue to expose Delta 100 at 100, or to give it the extra exposure in line with FP4+.

Lastly, I must declare a good old fashioned mistake. I adjusted aperture in order to change the exposure (as mentioned in the Perceptol sample), but neglected to take this into account when thinking about sharpness and grain. The problem is that, when comparing samples containing aperture and thus exposure differences, you are looking first at differences in aperture, and only second at the role of the developer. Other than making more convoluted adjustments to the lighting strength (and thus introducing a new set of variations), I'm not sure how this can be avoided. Better to look on sharpness differences with this in mind.

Rain Lanterns darkroom print offer

By way of a nod to the festive season, may I present this modest (but significant) print offer. 

I am offering for sale a limited edition of just ten darkroom prints of my 35mm photograph Rain Lanterns. The prints are approximately 9x6 inches, on Ilford’s superlative Multigrade Art 300 paper. This is an archival material that will therefore last for many, many years if properly cared for. It has an eggshell, slightly pitted surface and beautiful tonality.

The offer is significant because it is the first time I have made a darkroom print available for sale. Prints will be signed and numbered on the reverse, and will come with a certificate of authenticity. The certificates will bear an Ilford authentic fine art print label. I will not print any more of this edition (designated 2016), although I may choose to make future editions (these will be labelled appropriately, so that the current, and first, edition will be identifiable).

If you are ordering in the UK and do so before the 18th December, I will make every effort to ensure you get your print before Christmas. For orders outside the UK, please make them as soon as possible if you are looking for Christmas delivery. Due the nature of international postage, I can’t guarantee a pre-Christmas delivery, but I will ensure prints go out as soon as possible at my end. Postage is free for the UK, and there is a £10.00 charge per order for all other destinations.

Go yellow

Here's a little tip if you're shooting anything with sky in it on black and white film. Fit a yellow filter on your lens. This filter darkens blue, leading to better separation between sky and clouds (thus helping to avoid void-like white skies too). 

Other benefits of a yellow filter include giving better separation to foliage (it lightens green, yellow, orange and red), and, for many, more natural skin tones. Sure, you'll lose a stop of light (the filter shields the light entering the lens by a factor of two, i.e. the same scene needs twice as much exposure). If you are metering through the lens, there is no practical penalty to this, other than that speed loss.

A good addition to the kit of the black and white film photographer.

The mundane time machine

We make many kinds of photograph. There are our artistic endeavours, aspirational, serious, representative - if at all possible - of what kind of photographer we want to be. There are family photos, and photos to document things for practical purposes. Then there are the photos we make just because we feel like photographing. I rarely get much aesthetic joy with the latter if I’m honest, because generally the right subject and light are absent. I’ve just picked up the camera because I feel like doing photography.

The photograph in front of me is a most inauspicious one: it shows the side of a bath (in gaudy 1980s turquoise), a shower curtain, a cloth, a stretch of red patterned carpet, and the bottom of a door. Whilst looking at it, I am transported, partially if not fully and literally, to Morcambe, England circa 2000. It is a thoroughly mundane image, arguably of little aesthetic value and not an image possessed of public currency. Yet it depicts a space that I knew intimately, a space from my childhood and rich with memories of holidays at the seaside and of growing up. Like the Proustian trigger, it sets off a chain of associative memories and feelings. A most unremarkable photo and yet a poignant and fulsome personal one. An incidental thing and somehow a representative one.

Giving this further thought, I begin to wonder if the image is not all the more powerful for being incidental and mundane. Had it been a carefully constructed documentary shot of one of my grandparents’ rooms (for it is taken at their house), or a family ‘moment’, of the officially sanctioned happy family occasion kind, would it be quite so evocative?

Doubtless this is a personal perspective on a specific image, but it does point to a category of personal photography we might single out. Apparently incidental and mundane shots of small details that months, years or even decades later become thoroughly evocative and memory-laiden. 

I have always been interested in the historical nature of the photograph. It is a fact of photography that it always represents what has been (even if that moment is as close to us as a few seconds ago). Without wishing to romanticise the fact, photography acts something like a little time machine for our individual experiences. I think there are different kinds of images that do this; or, to put it differently, images that evoke memory through different mechanisms and lines of association.

My little meditation today provokes in me a modest resolution. A resolution to, every now and again, train my camera on some mundane but especially familiar object or corner of my life. A little visual message to my future self and a catalyst for memory.

Pebble Project update: into the darkroom

Today I bring you a little update of my Pebble Project in the form of some darkroom prints. I have printed the first four FP4+ negatives from the project (results shared in the previous Pebble post) on Ilford Multigrade Resin Coated Gloss paper. I will share these in a larger and more accessible form in a future post, but for now they read: LC29 top left, Perceptol top right, Ilfosol S bottom left, DDX bottom right (with development times as per the previous post).

The darkroom prints make the differences more obvious, and, on a cursory look, I felt they were somewhat more in keeping with what I'd initially expected from the different developers. No surprise here, as negatives are obviously designed to be printed in the darkroom and my expectations (and data such as that from Ilford) were shaped there.

I have more technical information to share on this (such as my darkroom printing decisions) and some more observations and corrections. The project is not at all straightforward - and certainly has its limitations -  but I am learning a lot which is great.

I am working on a little gallery of results for this site, which will enable the reader access to all the Pebble images in one place and to view larger versions. I'll publish this in the near future and add to it with more film / developer combinations as things progress. Watch this space.

Photomemo notebook: the photographer's friend

Thanks to smartphones and proliferating app technology, there have never been as many ways to quickly and easily record our thoughts. I'm particularly enjoying Google Keep at the moment, which is wonderfully efficient and especially good when surfing the web.

There are occasions, however, when the electronic method of note taking isn't the best. I enjoy using physical notebooks for their tactility, straightforwardness and easy accessibility. Notebooks foster connections and memories; when I look over old notes I find ideas return for reconsideration and new possibilities emerge.

Film photographers have long had the need to record data from their shooting activities for later reference. The act of so doing fosters good practice and can prompt little revelations about technique. The digital revolution killed the photographer's notebook at a stroke, with the migration of shooting information to the image file and metadata. The thing is, with your digital friend making comprehensive records for you - aperture, shutter speed, ISO, exposure modes, to name but some - you find yourself with less and less need to look. And with less looking comes less awareness and less learning.

Enter a product such as Photomemo by Mike Padua's artisanal Shoot Film Co. The relevance of this little notebook to film photographer's is fairly self-evident, but I want to go further and suggest that it might be a good thing for users of digital cameras too. Mike kindly sent me a couple of Photomemo's so that I could put them through their paces and write a report here. So what do I think of the design?

The form of Photomemo is not at all dissimilar to a number of notebooks already widely available. Indeed, this will be the biggest argument against these books: cheaper competitors that might do the same job. Photomemo is well made and has soft, receptive paper. On this front it gives nothing away to its rivals. (I have a love for Moleskine notebooks, and the quality of the paper is one of the things I value, along with their tough construction and durability.) There is a space for your name and details at the front, should it get lost, which is a nice touch. So at lot really rests on the design of the pages themselves, for it is here that your money appears to have gone.

I believe Mike consulted a number of different photographer's whilst in the design stage, and it has paid dividends. Most of the page is taken up with lined space for your notes, punctuated by some double-lined breaks. This might equate to 32 entries (perhaps not accidental, nearly equating to the 36 roll), but we should bear in mind this design is intended to accommodate, medium, large and other formats, such as instant or pinhole photography. However, it's in the header that the real thought has gone. This appears on every page and so needs to be right.

On the left hand side is space to record the roll number, start and end date, camera, lens, film and ISO. This is spot on for me. The roll number allows you to write a corresponding number on the film canister and, later, the negative bag. Start and end dates are invaluable in working out when exposures were made and whether or not time elapsed will impact on quality (with some films preferring prompt development). I have many shots where I can no longer tell if I used my 35mm or 50mm lens on my Leica rangefinder (lens reviewers take note: we see huge differences when we want to, they may be harder to see when all's said and done). Writing down lens used would help in this regard.

On the right hand side is subject, location, push/pull, and a little set of tick boxes for processed, scanned and archived. I like subject and location here, for me two key ways to remember a shoot. In my workflow, there would be a synergy with my Lightroom practice here, because I tend to organise my images by subject. Many of my film shots go into Lightroom, just as my digital ones do, so such potential for consistency is desirable. I don't tend to think in terms of push/pull (I'm more of the EI school), so I'm not sure I'd use this check. Processed et al I welcome, although I tend to scan individual frames and so would need to give this box some thought.

All in all, Photomemo is a well designed and beautifully printed product. I can really see it paying dividends in my shooting practice, especially if used over time and to build an archive of shooting information. Click on the button below if you'd like more details and to check out Shoot Film Co yourself.

Autumn, looking out of windows, Kodak Ektar and the British weather

Autumn can be a great time to be a photographer. There's the colourful foliage, the sun is lower in the sky creating long shadows and rich textures, and the light is that bit warmer.

This year I've become conscious that it's also frustrating time for me. I'm an academic and it's precisely the time I get busier indoors. Maybe I've been making more of those furtive glances towards the windows this year, half hoping not to glimpse any scenes of photographic possibility. As you might imagine, I've had to turn away with a sigh on more than one occasion.

So when I'm out shooting I have to hope that the sometimes temperamental light and weather in England is in cooperative mood. I have been shooting a lot of black and white of late, and decided it was time for a little break and some perhaps inevitable autumn colour. To make things interesting, I took a lens I had practically retired, a Nikon 70-300mm with built-in vibration reduction, and began to think about some long shots and flattened perspective.

I had some expired Kodak Ektar film in my fridge, and it was getting high time to put it to use. Ektar is a film that simply loves colour and sunshine. Expose it generously (I tend to go for a half stop more) and it is wonderfully saturated with a very distinctive character; underexpose and things get a lot more pastel and washed out. This was a risky film to choose, because with the British weather in the wrong mood, well, I may as well be back indoors trying not to look out of windows.

The image above is one of my favourites from a couple of outings with this autumn MO. On the whole I was lucky with some interesting light, and the weather held off for just long enough. I spent a fair bit of time chasing patchy sunshine through trees and using what I feared were all-too-slow shutter speeds (bearing in ming Ektar is a 100 ISO film). Nikon vibration reduction, it would seem, is a sound technology, and certainly helped in my endeavours. Now my window-bound glances shouldn't be too longing, and, besides, autumn hasn't really got too long to go.

Pebble Project: FP4+

1. FP4+ in Ilfotec LC29, 1+19, 8 mins, 21C

2. FP4+ in Perceptol, 1+1, 13 mins, 20C

3. FP4+ in Ilfosol S, 1+19, 6.5 mins, 20C

4. FP4+ in DDX, 1+4, 10 mins, 20C

In this instalment of Pebble Project I present four examples of FP4+ in different developers. In a sense, the results here speak for themselves and the reader is invited to draw his / her own conclusions. That said, I’d like share a little commentary of my own as guidance, especially for the reader who is less experienced in film use. This is a job of interpretation, and as such carries the usual caveat that your impressions may differ. 

My thoughts

You will see immediately that different developers have differing effects on similarly exposed film shots (which these are). This phenomenon is a big part of the joy film, its flexibility and potential to be shaped as the user wishes. There are different areas which we could focus on in interpreting the results. I made a list, and then printed the images so I could do a little table-top assessment. I decided to make things interesting by hiding the developers from myself (easy enough, given the degree of similarity of the shots), therefore doing a roughly ‘blind’ test.

First I asked myself about sharpness. I went backwards and forwards, and then backwards and forwards. I didn’t feel confident that I had reached a clear conclusion on this. On the one hand, this points to just how close some these developers come, on the other it might point to unaccounted for variables (like focus variation). I had, as it turns out, settled on the Perceptol sample as the ‘sharpest’, followed by LC29 and Ilfosol S together, with DDX last. I had firmly expected Ilfosol S to be the sharpest, given my experience of using this developer with Delta 100. Ilford don’t list Perceptol as being noted for sharpness. I don’t think DDX is generally known for sharpness, so it is perhaps not a surprise that I rate this last.

Next I tackled fine grain. I regarded DDX as the best (i.e. least grainy), followed by Ilfosol and Perceptol together, and LC29 last or ‘most grainy’. We’re not dealing with grain like golf balls here, far from it, but this is also not Delta 100 grain, which I consider to be finer. I think this conclusion is in keeping with what Ilford would say.

My next category was longest tonal range. I accept that this might be skewed by exposure issues (see notes below). My impression was that the longest march from deep tones to still palpable light ones went to Perceptol and LC29 together. Ilfosol I placed after, with DDX last, insomuch as it has a mid to light tonal range in which the extremities of tone don’t feature. Put differently, we could say DDX has a very open tonality. Ilford say that DDX provides the best overall image quality for liquid developers with FP4+. Perhaps this open tonality figures for them.

I then thought about the most open shadows, having in mind landscapes and other such images where blocked up shadows are a problem. I have hinted at my impression, namely that DDX has the most open shadows, followed by Ilfosol, Perceptol and LC29 in that order. Ilfosol sits in my mental map as something of a contrasty developer, and so I was a little surprised by this, and might have expected Perceptol to figure more highly. DDX gives a speed increase, so this again may account for the more generously exposed darker tones.

The quickest to lose the highlights I saw as clearly Ilfosol, although I am not sure I can usefully distinguish between the others. This is more in keeping with my own impression of Ilfosol as a sharpness enhancing developer that be difficult to print if the shots were made in high contrast light (I am referring to 35mm, somewhat loosely metered and metered from experience, rather than a careful zone system style placement and development regime). FP4+ has a ‘shoulder’ on its contrast curve, and so should deliver very manageable highlights. My results do nothing to contradict this.

Lastly, I thought about mid tone contrast. I went with LC29 and Perceptol together first (i.e. most mid tone contrast), followed by Ilfosol and then DDX. I have used LC29 a lot with HP5 plus and am used to seeing good negatives with plenty of contrast. I have always thought of Perceptol as rather smooth, but my experience is mainly with HP5 plus.

What does this mean so far?

Well, if there is any objectivity here (I hope there is some), then I have seen that some very well established ideas about FP4+ and its developers have been confirmed. I have also had some of my assumptions challenged, and, for me, this would now have an impact on my shooting and developing choices. I haven’t shot very much FP4+ in the grand scheme of things and am already beginning to cook up some uses. I must acknowledge that looking at studio test shots is not the same as looking at a contact print of ‘real’ images. The alchemy of film aside, these results do provide me some food for thought, and I hope this instalment offers you something useful too.

Where to now?

There are more developers to try with FP4+. These I will add to the start made above. I think it is right to compare other similar speed films, and Delta 100 is the obvious candidate, which I shall move on to next. Another legitimate option is to compare different speed films in the same developer. I may do this relatively quickly too, because it might prove more accessible to those who have not shot too much film. A beginner might quite rightly ask, if I buy one bottle of developer, which films might I explore for different conditions? I have started with a relatively arcane scenario by taking one film and comparing it to itself differently developed. Watch this space.

 

Technical points to note

I was looking at gloss inkjet prints, made on an Epson P600 machine, using Epson’s Advanced Black and White print driver. The print medium and driver play their part in the results. I was conscious of some differences between print and screen, as I would expect. Were darkroom prints to be made from the original negatives (here scanned on a Nikon Coolscan machine), the paper and development choices would be an influencing factor too. There is no ‘actual’ negative, other than, well, the actual negative! When we print, with combine parts that work on one another.

Where I am citing Ilford I am referring to relevant datasheets. These are excellent and provide lots of useful information that anyone interested in these matters should consult.

My development times are ‘standard’ (and convenient) ones given by Ilford. I have not used any ‘exotic’ variations, for example greater dilution and stand development. I reason that the Ilford times and dilutions make a great baseline should other recipes be explored. There are many such recipes in the film using community, and often these are cherished and highly personal.

I gave the Perceptol sample twice the exposure, given that it is a speed reducing developer. DDX is known as a speed-enhancing developer, and thus the sample is consistent with the idea that it should be a little ‘faster’, seen here as lighter tones. I did not alter the exposure for the DDX sample.

The view up close 

1. FP4+ in Ilfotec LC29, 1+19, 8 mins, 21C

2. FP4+ in Perceptol, 1+1, 13 mins, 20C

3. FP4+ in Ilfosol S, 1+19, 6.5 mins, 20C

4. FP4+ in DDX, 1+4, 10 mins, 20C

An hour in the darkroom

I have been busy on lots of fronts of late, but especially with teaching, as it the start of the academic year. My Pebble Project is in full swing, and it too has taken no modest amount of time, demanding my concentration and discipline.

So it is easy for me to forget that some of the best pleasures in doing photography are simple ones. A little time in the darkroom the other day served as a reminder. 

Despite some reservations, I went ahead and printed a somewhat underexposed negative taken with my Yashica Mat G medium format camera and Ilford FP4+ film. The image is inescapably dark, so I went along with this, hoping to stay just the right side of 'meh, too dark'. The negative is indeed thin, but is it nevertheless amazing how much detail still resides in even the thinnest of areas.

In a case such as this, one's printing choices are narrowed and fine margins become all-important. My first print was too dark and lacked contrast. Still, I could see that the image struck up a relationship with the paper and its pearly, pitted surface, so I pressed on. I went up by about half a grade, and reduced my exposure. The tonality was now much more open and the image remained suitably dark, but gained much more of a sense of the light beyond. I finished the print with a gentle vignette, maybe heavier than my usual, and dodged the flowers a little to lift the lightest tones and draw the eye to the melancholy memorial.

An hour's printing with this forgiving, flexible and tactile medium that is darkroom.

The finished print in hand. Tactile, simple, analogue pleasures

A little Twitter testimonial

Thank you Richard @richard_pickup for the amazing print and the sweet note! You have convinced me to look at the p600/800 seriously now! pic.twitter.com/sw7C3HqJQJ

— Ribnar (@ribnar) October 11, 2016

For more about this print click here:

The perfect is the enemy of the good

I came across a little quote by Alan Ross this week that I'd like to share. Ross was Ansel Adams' assistant for a time, and the quote addresses a point I've spoken to before, namely that we don't make great work all the time, no matter how wonderful a photographer we are. I think it's a lovely little revelation and well put:

“When I first went to work as Ansel’s assistant, one of the things that struck me the most was the realization, while going through boxes and boxes of his work, that he had made an awful lot of very ordinary photographs! I was somewhat stunned to learn that he had no illusions and no expectations that every film he exposed would wind up being another one of what he fondly called his ‘Mona Lisa’s. As an awe-struck young photographer in the presence of The Master, this revelation was an incredible relief to me; it came as a release from the burden of expecting myself to produce only perfection. It was better to experiment and try things that might work, and openly and simply respond to feelings than to over intellectualize. In fact I soon came to learn that one of Ansel’s favorite phrases was ‘The Perfect is the enemy of the Good!’ ”

— Alan Ross, Photographer

Film rocks!

FP4+ in Ilfotec LC29

One of the joys of looking carefully at the medium of photography is seeing things you didn’t expect. Working on setting up my Pebble Project (see previous post), I was all geared up to compare film and developer combinations, when I noticed this.

Before making my film shots of my pebble studio still life, I made some digital ones to conveniently test the light, composition and exposure. I duly imported the raw file into Lightroom, along with the film scans that are the focus of the exercise. I made a quick print of the FP4+ in LC29 exposure, as a reference shot for the ones that would follow.

Accept that I hadn’t. It was actually a print of the raw file (with ‘auto’ applied in the develop module). So I went back to atone for my error, and printed the FP4+ frame. Wow, what a difference!

The phrase that springs to mind is ‘descriptive power’. This is what the film frame has over the digital one. There is a depth and presence that is simply absent from the digital capture. The grain is clearly present, but adds a striking sense of detail and sharpness (this I should expect of course).

Now, this isn’t quite a fair comparison, because a raw digital capture needs to be nurtured and carefully processed. I am not in the business of claiming that film is ‘better’ than digital (or vice versa, for that matter). They are different media, with different strengths. Yet there is no escaping the special quality that film imparts. Nothing wrong with noticing - and celebrating - that.

Film rocks. (Pebbles - I know. The pun was unintended!)

Be a better photographer - all ten posts in one place

Missed any of my 'be a better photographer' series? Here's a handy link to all ten posts.

New blog series: Pebble Project

2. FP4+ in Perceptol, 1+1, 13 mins, 20C

I begin to today with a comparison of two film shots.

Both shots are on Ilford’s FP4+ film. The first is developed in Ilfotec LC29; the second Perceptol, a developer that begins life as a powder. The studio setups were identical in each, at least as far as I could make them. The stones are stuck to a sheet of perspex, making the exercise potentially repeatable.

I have some observations, although these alone aren’t the purpose of this post, as I shall elaborate in a moment. Frankly, I expected the tones of Perceptol to be more different from LC29 than they are. Personally (and subjectively), I see this as ‘win’ for LC29, as Perceptol is a personal favourite and in my mental map of film tonally very distinct. (I should really say, for completeness, that this notion is actually built on my use of HP5+ film.) I can see that the grain is pushed back in the Perceptol version. Grain is still there, but it is very smooth. The highlights are a tiny bit ‘longer’ in the Perceptol version, at least to my eye.  Naturally, as I provide images, the reader is invited to make his or her own conclusions.

Enlargement from sample 1. FP4+ LC29

Enlargement from sample 2. FP4+ Perceptol

Now, notwithstanding the special alchemy that happens when different photographers put the same films (and developer) to use in differing circumstances, thus leading to unfathomably different results (and this is a huge factor), I think the idea of trialling different film and developer combinations in a (sort of) standardised setup* has intriguing potential, and, furthermore, may be of genuine use to a film-using community. Maybe this is the geek and obsessive in me rather than the artist, but my mind races with what I might learn as I compare films in this way. How might Delta 100 compare to FP4+ in LC29 (some of you could make a good guess, I’m sure)? In Perceptol, to itself in LC29 and FP4+? What about HP5+? Or DD-X?

You will see where I am going with this. As I’m keen to reiterate, you won’t necessarily get the same results as me; yet with my standardised pebble shot, some legitimate practical comparisons can still be made. I think this could be good knowledge to take into the field. I could spend a long time shooting different films and subjects without being able to make such sound comparisons.

So I end with a modest plan. I will run this as a series of occasional blog postings reporting on different films and developers. If the results build up as I anticipate they will, I should get to a position where I can share an additional summary post (or even article). I envisage maybe four weeks between postings, to give me time to produce the results and write short instalments, although due to my other commitments this may vary somewhat. Feel free to comment or email me with your thoughts (see the ‘contact’ link above), or you can contact me through Twitter (@richard_pickup).

*A brief note on the method behind the samples, and a caveat.

The studio setup is identical in each shot (position of light, light power setting, reflector placement, tripod position). The same camera and lens have been used, along with the same exposure settings. The chosen focus point on the pebbles is the same. Due to the time between the shots (and the necessary time between any shots I may make for the series in future), the framing of the pebbles varied slightly. After processing the film to the times and temperatures stated, both negatives were scanned on a dedicated Nikon film scanner and imported into Lightroom. I made no adjustments to exposure, nor did I sharpen the images. Images were cropped for neatness.

I think it’s worth making this declaration, because with such tests anomalies creep in, and one has to be aware of possible variables. For instance, focussing is prone to small differences and may impact on perceptions of sharpness. Who is to say that the camera was not subject to small vibrations in one of the shots. (Naturally, I’ve been very careful, but we should not entirely rule such things out.) Any conclusions drawn should therefore be taken with a small pinch of salt. As I say above, they should have useful validity but they shouldn’t be taken as gospel. I’ve done these tests in my spare time, out of curiosity and in the spirit of exploration.

Thanks must go to Jevon Tooth for the idea using a collection of stones in a test shot of film tonality.

Barber Barber, Birmingham

Sometimes a street photography scene comes to you. That was certainly the case here, as I walked past Barber Barber for the first time. This impressive establishment is located in the new Grand Central complex in Birmingham, and is positively baroque in visual features, not least the colourful atire of the staff (or 'scoundrels', as I believe they are called). The whole thing is patently designed to be looked at, with wall to floor glass to the front.

I double-backed, spent a moment or two framing, and waited for the figures to fill the spaces in a pleasing and dynamic way. I knew the lighting and visual interest would work well in black and white. A case of right film, right camera, right place.

What's special about a film portrait?

The other day I came across a photographer wrestling with the task of capturing his daughter on large format film. He declared, with some modesty given the skill he showed in his images, his attempts a failure. I got the sense he would triumph, however, his declaration being at any rate interim in nature.

Large format photographers are not strangers to difficulty (their medium certainly brings its challenges) nor are they afraid to pursue highly individual whims and visions. It would be easy to dismiss this gentleman as a maverick, and to retire with a sigh, saying something like ‘wrong kit friend, try 35mm and continuous focus for better results’.

Yet an essential part of this photographer’s vision, the look he desires, is 5x4 film. It is a very particular look. And film. Something I fully appreciate in the endeavour is the idea of committing a person’s, nay a loved one’s, visage to film.

So in mulling this over, I set myself the task of expressing what exactly it is that makes a film portrait special. The obvious comparison is with digital, so why choose film instead? The answer I have so far come up with may be no more than a kind of illusion, a piece of analogue nostalgia in an increasingly digital time, a fool’s gold of image making.

When I think of my own film portraits, I think of the silver gelatin crystals in the negative that have reacted to the light that emanated from the subject. Physical stuff, now tiny grains, that make up an image. A person, etched in a transparent medium that becomes, through the further action of light, a physical photograph to hold in wonderment. When the negative (or the photograph) is in my hand, I hold a token of a causal connection to the being who was once before the camera. I believe semiologists call this kind of relationship between sign and thing represented ‘indexical’. Like footprints in the snow signalling someone’s presence.

Now, digital is of course no less physical than film, hence my talk of fool’s gold. Yet the physicality of digital is, well, just not very physical. Many others have pointed out that images on memory cards and folders on computers are ephemeral. Negatives and prints, by contrast, support the romance of the imagined connection to a person that a portrait fosters. Like a Proustian smell, they are evocative and sensory, and nurture memories. The negative in my fingers is like a little light trap; a special light that really came, indexically, from the person caught within.

My ruminations don’t address the ‘look’ of film as a factor, but I think this isn’t the best place to look for distinctions, at least not on its own. I use and enjoy film simulation presets on my digital shots. These go a long way to imitating film (although not the whole way, for further technical reasons involving focal lengths and formats, old lenses and so on). It is not (just) the look of film that makes it special. It is that and the gravitas of the physical light trap of which I write. Digital pictures image people; film ones bear their imprint.